London Underground tenders for mobile trial

London Underground (LU) have published their tender for a communications operator to provide infrastructure for a trial of providing mobile communication access on the London Underground system. The trial project will see the winning bidder ‘to design, install, operate and maintain the appropriate infrastructure’ and to ‘offer the services to all Mobile Network Operators for the period of the trial’.

The trial will offer coverage on the Waterloo and City Line station platforms at Bank and Waterloo stations and the tunnel section in between. If the trial is successful LU will then decide whether to provide mobile telephony, data services, WiFi and WiMAX, DAB (Digital Audio Broadcast), and DVB (Digital Video Broadcast) on the LU network.

If LU decides to extend the coverage ‘a further competition will be undertaken to appoint a concessionaire to extend the services to other parts of the LU network whereby the concessionaire would design, install, fund, operate, maintain and upgrade appropriate infrastructure and provide a revenue to LU. In return the concessionaire would be granted a right to exploit the provision of mobile telephony and data services to third parties in the areas of coverage on the LU network’.